Who's Counting: Math vs. Miracles

— -- — It sometimes seems to me that news coverage of miracles is more extensive than coverage of scientific breakthroughs.

Popular accounts of miracles (as well as of mysterious prophecies) have always appeared in supermarket tabloids, where they’re almost as common as unhappy celebrities.
    

In recent years, however, they’ve surfaced in magazines, newspapers, and periodicals of all types, on radio and TV, and in books and movies. In May, Newsweek reported that a large majority of Americans of diverse religious persuasions believe in miracles.
    

Two weighty miracle stories, in particular, have received a lot of recent attention. Since they provide a convenient prism through which to examine the concept of a miracle, let me very briefly describe each.

The first concerns Mother Drexel, a Philadelphia heiress, nun, and social worker who died in 1955. The long process to sainthood for Drexel is finally nearing an end. Drexel’s canonization hinged upon official certification, completed only a few months ago, of two posthumous miracles that have been attributed to her. Both involved the unexplained cures of sick children.
    

A more well-known miracle, the Fatima story, dates from 1917. Three peasant children in the small Portuguese village of Fatima are said to have witnessed a sequence of visions of the Virgin Mary during which she revealed to them three prophecies. The first two were long ago interpreted as foretellings of World War II and the rise and fall of Soviet communism. The final one, made public just two months ago (the full text was released on June 26th), is said to have foretold the shooting of Pope John.
    

That Mother Drexel was an admirable, compassionate, and selfless woman who divested herself of her considerable fortune and made the world a better place I have no doubt. Nor do I have any reservations about the sincerity of the Portuguese children or the piety of their many devotees.